richbrummitt

Now they’re fixed in place. First I cut out from the spruce, cleaned up and thinned the brass chair by filing the underside so that the total height of the rail in the chair measured 0.25-0.3mm. Tin and then sweat onto the timber in the right place whilst holding down. A piece of etch waste under the switch rail holds everything level whilst fixing. and the running line seen without the support End on the joggles and the planing are worth the effort. Most of the rails are still either missing or misaligned because there are only heel chairs as yet.

Today’s efforts have created all the switch blades required for the layout: 3 LH 9’, 1 RH 9’ and a pair of 12’. (The 2 odd LH are for the catch points.) These have been cleaned up and deburred and the fit checked in the cast brass Easitrac chairs that I’m hoping will work well to restrain them as loose heeled. I’ve dipped back into that David Smith book again this time for pictures of stretcher bars and some catch points have one and others two It is clear that the stretcher goes all the way across the 4’ even when there’s only one switch blade. One question answered and another one to ponder. I think it’s a case of guess. The reason I’m even pondering is that I might fit both stretcher bars on the switches for turnouts - if it can be made to work - because they might improve rigidity and or reliability. I’m not going to use the cast brass chairs throughout so I’ve prodded up some etched ‘Laurie’ chairs too. They’re a bit hit and miss at the moment. I did the slide chairs first and they were a bit easier than the plain. I might get better with practice but I found it harder than it perhaps could be to line up the fret to the jig, especially as the lines of chairs made a habit of moving around on their skinny tags (I get why they’re skinny) rather than staying aligned. I realised afterwards I bent the slide chairs the wrong way and I’m hoping it won’t a, matter and b, notice.

Most likely 2-361.

The chassis used to run, and well. It was the best of what I had made. Thanks Mikkel, It’s so frustrating but I will get there somehow I am determined. Then I will have the first off engine appropriate to period.

Very interested but I need a printer to play this game. A quick look suggests that a Mars Pro 2 would be most suitable (with predictable Elegoo availability problems) or maybe a Phrozen mini mono 4K but they are quite a bit more expensive. Christmas is coming but I don’t think FC pockets are that deep.

Timbers have been gapped. Thank you for the steer. I used a rat tail file and buzzed everything out with a meter to be sure of isolation as required. My box of wire was finally depleted so I ordered more to allow the wires to be placed in the holes below the rails before adding rail. I stripped and soldered one end of each wire bent at a right angle so they cannot fall through the holes. I should have paid more attention to what I was ordering (except colour and price) because I’ve got three different types of what I thought was the same wire. It’s all 26awg 7/0.2 tinned copper but the red has 30mils insulation, the blue 15mils and the black is XLPVC insulation (also 15mils). Good job I drilled the holes over 2mm diameter because the red is pretty chunky and is a snug fit! I’ve now started cutting rail to suit and got the stock rails threaded into the Easitrac bases. It may not be immediately obvious but they’re all joggled too. The one bottom right has the rail head filed down beyond the joggle plus some black. I’ve given it the same treatment as recommended in Track for wing and check rails because the catch point should not have had much running over that bit of rail.

Back in the spring (installment 5) I had got the wheels turning again, albeit briefly. I since solved the problem of passing the pick ups through the footplate and onto the motor and had the engine on the track rather than a direct power supply for the first time since the body upgrade started. The motor is retained in the lower visible part of the boiler, which is removable with the footplate. The tanks and smokebox cover over this. The worm mesh is separated every time the body is removed. This being the compromise for modelling the bottom of the boiler and the balancing pipe between the tanks. I contemplated several solutions and consulted the 2mm ZAG on the possibilities of passing track voltage from the chassis to the lower body section before realising the solution of phosphor bronze tangs sticking up vertically with suitable bends to bear upon some very thin double-sided copperclad sweated to the insides of the firebox forming the a contact pad. These tangs take up space either side of the worm - not yet used for anything else - and there is room on the pad to have the motor wires soldered on in the future. The pads have some temporary (thick) wires on to attach to the motor wiring until the final fix It was not working so well though, even with some weight added to aid pickup. I reasoned that either the ebay coreless motors are awful or something else was up with this previously operational chassis. It turns out it was a bit of both! I indulged in a Tramfabriek motor to prove the point on the motor and there was obviously more torque available. This was a strong step in the right direction and with some loctite holding the worm on the shaft in place of superglue the motor was turning the wheels or stalled. This chassis must have rather suffered at my hands during this body re-modeling since the movement was not as smooth as I recall. Particularly when going forwards the engine will not start smoothly, requiring extra voltage from the controller and then shooting off a little quickly. There is some noticeable gear or grinding noise, not much, but more so in the forward direction. I've tried a number of things: Separating the wormwheel from the second stage reduction along the axis of the idler in case there was some interference with the teeth Removing further material from the backhead Additional mass (to try and aid pick up but it seemed only to make the stalls worse) Clearing the gears, in particular the worm (the spur gears were done originally), of any burrs Tweaking the worm mesh Wiring the controller directly to the motor It was getting closer but not good enough to avoid the stalling. The engine sat back in a drawer until I felt less grumpy about it. I again sought the help of friends for suggestions or advice. @queensquare suggested to give it a good wash in some cleaner (IPA) and if that didn't sort things then action should be what I feared: it was time to go backwards until the problem could be found. Remove the body and motor; get back to a rolling chassis. Check. Then: coupling rods off; secondary pick ups off; and if still all is not well then wheels out and start over. After a good clean the coupling rods and secondary pick ups are off. The former retained, the latter (now just bent and manky looking phosphor bronze wire) binned. It was rolling reasonably well after this brutality, but perhaps not quite perfectly. I have put it all back together for wiring the motor directly to the controller for another test. Unfortunately lack of materials halts progress now because the long lengths of wire I had used previously now seem inflexible enough to tell whether smooth operation has been achieved; the wire is influencing the engine on the track. I've ordered some wire for Ogbourne and added some extra wire with many thin cores and the thinnest insulation I could find to the order in the hope it is extra flexible.

Every coach you build takes you ever closer to the ‘rule’: “no two the same in a GWR train”! Each time I see photographs on this thread I think about building some of the carriages in my stash. I’ve not furthered any of them so far, but maybe one time. Thank you for the inspiration.

I had been trying to have a solid guesstimate at the coaching stock that I should build for my own projects. I'd willfully avoided the 1930s onwards photographic collections because I imagine my modelled period as the early 1920s. However there is less information (STT/WTTs) to be found - there seems a big gap between 1910ish and 1930 something - or I am looking in none of the right places. I widened the net in an attempt to find out whether the traffic changes much with time and am currently transcribing elements from earlier and later STTs for comparison. Your post suggests, as is so often said about modelling a prototype, that following a dated (preferably verified) photograph is the best route. Identifying carriages from photographs is something that I have not acquired skills in, yet. The GWR did seem to prefer to run most things on the more northerly route after Reading through Swindon and Bristol rather than by the shorter route, and the Becket book remarks on this also. The B&H route was not densely populated, which may account for this? I have read in (I think) the Middleton Press books that the population of some of the villages served was in decline after the early 1900s. Sorry John, we are now digressing.

The etched ones from recent years (last 10-15 at least) had half etches that you could punch with a pin if you so desired. I sometimes punch them out and other times don't remember. Those illustrated on my horseboxes (see second picture down) were punched.

I was trawling through Train Formations and Carriage Workings of the Great Western Railway (Becket, 2002) and was surprised at how few 70' coaches I found used on trains over the B&H route at this time. I expected more. Those trains that did include them seem to include more than one marshalled together if memory serves. One of those books that was available for a while but impossible to find now at a sensible price but if you can access would be worth a look if you want to try and represent particular services (obviously only more accurate for the short period the book covers).

Yes, that. Visible above the seated person in picture 2 and by the platform lamp in picture 3 where the pictures refer to those in your most recent post. They appear to be a representation of some white text on a black background.

I'm already out of sequence: One lesson I almost forgot was to create the holes for the wiring to the rails before placing the rails. These are now done but it will take some time to pick all the bits of the sticky tape. I've not gapped the copperclad timbers yet. It would have been easier to do that before placing them. I'm now considering doing the gaps after the rails are all soldered because that will make it all more solid.

What is that attached in two places on the platform side of the E95 adjacent to the corridor windows - notices?

Brake shoes maybe since they can be made thicker (so perhaps better than etched) and are mostly protected. On engines there would be the added benefit that they can be non-conductive. Brake levers I have my doubts over but maybe in the right material they will work out.

I've downloaded nanoCAD and had a brief play with it this evening. It has two things that I really wanted in my current tool that are not available when I selected. Some odd (to me) behaviour but that may be down to options I have not set. A lot still to explore but I can see me doing future work here rather than with the software I have been using. What I don't know until I try is how well it would convert into an etch. I've only had two issues with files sent to PPD in the past that have not been my fault and that is my minimum thickness has been optimistic and overlaid objects have been interpreted differently to how I imagined they might.

That is the most tedious part of the process. Once you get to that point the interesting design work is complete. I was thinking about the deconstructing of the net / folds within a particular component when I wrote 'how to lay out'.

Something for me to consider maybe. It is as much, if not more, about how to lay out as it is how to use the tool to draw it. Hammers are for proper engineering. The skill is in where to tap and how hard

Onshape is a 3D package. It’s very good at what it does but I cannot recommend it to a casual user who wishes to do some etch artwork. Until recently I would have said DraftSight but they changed the business model on that and it got expensive. I would look at something like LibreCAD (free) or NanoCAD (Free and paid options). A lot of pro users are making satisfied noises about nanoCAD. I’ve not tried nanoCAD yet so we could learn together if you like? It would be a fun and useful thing to do a thread on, I think.

Paul, I hate to be the one to point this out but I rather someone said something before you build more if you have not already spotted this: The brakes should be the other way around in your opening picture since the brake actuating lever lifts the swan neck and the shaft rotates anti-clockwise. This is the opposite of almost every other brake system where with the lever to the right and when driven directly a simple lever rotates the shaft clockwise (the other side often has a cam, lift link or left hand lever to ensure the correct rotation of the cross shaft to apply the brakes). Kind Regards, Rich.

The new angle seems to be much better for a going away shot, else there is nowhere within the frame for the loco to be going. I'm rather fond of a 28xx too, especially one without outside steam pipes.

After doing the research in types and reading a bunch of reviews I went for a desiccant dehumidifier (Meaco DD8L*) rather than a compressor type. It still works well at the sub 20C that the garage workroom is normally maintained at and the noise is little more intrusive than a desk fan. To begin with it removed a lot of moisture (several trays worth in a couple of weeks) but it has settled right down now to a kind of ‘maintenance’ level. *Usual disclaimer - Happy customer, no connection.

yes please

It can be had/done: https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=72605 RDG tools have a 14x1 - 12x1 converter which might allow you to use a holder designed for the later U3/4.

It works just as many internet based shopping sites do: you browse for what you want and then checkout. There is good information about the various options when buying, sometimes hidden behind buttons links or ? hints. The difference with many other sites is you are buying community created content with possibly varying quality though I think it is reasonably clear from the site if a design is proven to print and whether the images are photos or the real thing of computer generated images of the file.